The “Monk with a Camera”: An Interview with Khen Rinpoche Nicholas Vreeland

DHARMA AND THE MODERN WORLD

January-March 2015

Nicholas Vreeland. Photo by Adam Bartos.

Nicholas Vreeland is hard to sum up in a word or two. He’s an American, although he was born in Switzerland, the son of a U.S. diplomat, and grew up in Germany, France and Morocco. He’s also Ven. Geshe Thupten Lhundup, a Tibetan Buddhist monk since 1984, recipient of a Geshe degree and editor of two books with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He’s the grandson of Diana Vreeland, the former larger-than-life fashion editor of Vogue magazine. He is a student of Khyongla Rato Rinpoche and serves as the director of The Tibet Center in New York City. In 2012, he became the first Westerner to be appointed by His Holiness as abbot of a Gelugpa monastery in India, and he’s a world recognized photographer. Known to many friends and associates as Nicky, he’s also the subject of the new feature-length documentary film called Monk with a Camera.

In November 2014, Mandala managing editor Laura Miller spoke with Vreeland, who is addressed as Khen Rinpoche at Rato Monastery in Mundgod, Karnataka, India, where he is abbot. The documentary had its New York premiere just after our interview. While most media coverage has focused on Vreeland’s rather extraordinary background and the challenges he experienced balancing his love of photography with his devotion to serious Dharma study and practice, being appointed as abbot of Rato Monastery is an historic event in terms of the development of contemporary Tibetan Buddhism. With this in mind, Mandala discussed with him his experience thus far of being Khen Rinpoche Nicholas Vreeland.

Mandala: I wanted to start out going back to April 20, 2012, when His Holiness the Dalai Lama appointed you abbot of Rato Monastery. I think it was very exciting for Western Tibetan Buddhist practitioners. Can you share, from your point of view, how you see the significance of that appointment?

Khen Rinpoche Nicholas Vreeland: From my point of view, it was quite extraordinary and unexpected. I think I can go to the extent of saying it was terrifying because not only was I assuming an enormous responsibility on behalf of His Holiness, but I was also being propelled into a sort of stratosphere that I had been very content to look up to, that part of my practice maintained a particular perspective of. The abbots are sort of revered within the monasteries, and I knew very well how unworthy I was of that reverence. To suddenly have to bear it, to really assume that role, was terrifying.

Mandala: In the past two-and-a-half years, how has it worked out so far? What is it like serving as the abbot and what does that mean in your day-to-day life to be “Khen Rinpoche”?

Khen Rinpoche: Well, it totally changes your relationship with your fellow monks. The abbot doesn’t really have friends among the monks in a monastery. The abbot sort of sits in his own situation and has to maintain a certain equal attitude toward all the monks in the monastery, and therefore, as I say, can’t have friends. People don’t come by and say, “Hi,” and I can’t stop by and say, “Hi,” to them. I am in my room. Those people who come to see me visit me for official reasons, and then that is sort of it. I don’t want to say it is lonely, but you are alone.

I was instructed very specifically by His Holiness to bring Western ideas into the job of being abbot. At first when I joined the monastery, I really had nothing to do with the administration. I was studying, however, until we found ourselves on our own. Rato initially was part of Drepung Loseling. There weren’t enough monks who had come from Tibet to really establish ourselves separately until the late 1980s, so when I joined, we were very much a part of Loseling. We were all members of Loseling. We studied at Loseling; we took examinations at Loseling; we attended all the Loseling prayers. But when we became separated, things changed dramatically.

We do continue to study with the great masters of Loseling. We do continue to be able to go to the Loseling debate courtyard. However, we have our own administration; we have our own prayers; we have our own yearly examinations. We are a separate monastery. When I was asked to help establish ourselves separately, the condition that I gave was that we do everything absolutely properly, legally, by the books according to Indian laws and procedures. So from the start, we have been doing things correctly. As abbot I have really tightened up on all aspects of administration.

Mandala: How many monks are there currently? What are their ages? Where are they from?

Khen Rinpoche: There are about 100. They vary in age from six to about 80. Sadly, we had a 91-year-old monk die last year. They are from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, India – meaning, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh – the border regions that have always been Tibetan Buddhist religiously and culturally. We have one Taiwanese-American monk and we have me.

Mandala: What kind of challenges do the monks face in our current 21st-century world? As abbot do you have perhaps some special insight or experience with your knowledge from the West that you can offer to help meet these challenges? I’m curious about some of the realities for the monks that you’re actually having to deal with.

Khen Rinpoche: I wouldn’t call it a challenge, but one of the first items that was brought up at the first meeting of abbots that I attended – the abbots of the 11 important Tibetan Gelugpa government monasteries – was the introduction of science into the curriculum in an official way and the introduction of questions on science to be included in the Gelugpa examinations. It was decided that we would introduce questions by 2016 and that we would therefore start to include the study of science to prepare monks. We would also include the study of science in the curriculum to prepare the monks who would be sitting for their geshe examinations, for the questions that would be in the Lharampa Geshe exams. That was very interesting because that was a practical matter that really came from His Holiness’ insistence that it was essential that science be part of the curriculum, and so we all worked together to make it work and to integrate a syllabus that created by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamasala and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.

Every step of the way I had to insist that we immediately employ a science teacher who would teach not just science, but mathematics and English, because it was essential that people become familiar with certain English terms that would be used in the study of science.

The other thing that I have been involved with since the beginning of our being separated from Loseling was the education of our young monks, insisting that we assume responsibility for their education regardless of whether or not they remained monks. There was, among some of the elder monks, the thought that if you provide a monk with a general education, you are basically providing him with the ability to leave the monkhood. I said I just didn’t believe that we had a right to clip their wings – that in today’s world it was essential that people have an education and that they would most probably leave the monkhood regardless of whether or not they had an education.

Upon my arrival, I discovered that there were 16 new, young monks, and that the elder monks of the monastery had just decided that they would not provide them with a modern education, that they would simply educate them in the traditional ways in order to really prepare them to be old-fashioned monks. I said “no” and I got them admission in the Drepung Loseling school by speaking to the abbot of Loseling. I told the older monks that I didn’t consider that we had the choice because we did not have the right – therefore, we did not have the choice – to prevent them from having a modern education.

Photo by Nicholas Vreeland

Mandala: When did the separation take place between Rato and Loseling? How many years has it been?

Khen Rinpoche: I think it was about 1990. When we had grown so large that we were becoming a heavy financial burden on Loseling, and when it was evident that there were Rato traditions that we had a responsibility to maintain, but also that it was hard for our monks to maintain both the Rato and Loseling traditions, there came a point where it became essential that we stand on our own feet.

Mandala: Could you talk a little bit about your relationship with your teacher Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, who is also a teacher of Lama Zopa Rinpoche?

Khen Rinpoche: Khyongla Rinpoche has been my teacher since 1977. I was brought to his teaching at The Tibet Center by friends of mine and have been studying with him ever since. I was a photographer. I was a freelance photographer and not a very successful one, and so I had lots of time. Rinpoche immediately recognized that and got me to start helping him. He was writing. He would dictate, and I would write, and that became the basis of his teaching me. He was writing a lam-rim text, so I had the extraordinary fortune of receiving teachings on the graded stages of the path to enlightenment from Rinpoche over a period of years as he worked on this book. It was as a result of that work that I developed this inspiration to devote my life to the spiritual path and to do so as a monk. It was clear from those teachings that that was the most beneficial thing that I could do.

The terrifying thing was that I actually had the freedom to do so. I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time; I didn’t have the sort of worldly commitments that would prevent me from becoming a monk. When I announced that to Rinpoche, he said, “That is very good. That’s something that you should work towards.” So I continued to work with him and simplified my life. After a few years, he recommended that I request an audience with His Holiness and ask His Holiness’ advice, which I was able to do in the summer of 1984 during a visit of His Holiness to New York. There, after His Holiness questioned me about my practice, my plans, and my idea about becoming a monk, he asked where I would be a monk. I said that I hoped to go to India and study in a monastery. His Holiness said, “Yes, that is good,” and that I should do so soon, and that I should do so with the idea of eventually coming back to the West and practicing as a Buddhist there. He mentioned that it was essential that Buddhism be practiced by Americans in America, and that for now it is the Tibetans that are sort of helping the integration of Buddhism into our American society, but that eventually that would be the responsibility of Americans. So I went off to become a monk. I joined Rato Monastery, which is the monastery in which Khyongla Rinpoche had studied in in Tibet. In joining Rato, I was also joining Loseling initially.

Although I lived in India, Khyongla Rinpoche [who lives in the United States] very much remained my root teacher and guided me along my path and continues to assume that role in my life. As abbot I realized that so much of what he has taught me has prepared me for this. Of course, I turn to Rinpoche with all the dilemmas that I face in this position.

Mandala: You’ve talked about feeling terrified of these very large undertakings. I think this might resonate with some of our readers who have also taken on the tasks of trying to start a Dharma center or build a large holy object to fulfill the wishes of their teachers. I wonder what kind of advice or counsel you have to offer in this regard? How do you work with these feelings of, “Oh, my gosh! What have I gotten myself into?” or “I don’t know if I am up to the task.” As a practice, how do you take that on?

Khen Rinpoche: I think that we should do whatever we do in taking little steps. I think that along our spiritual paths we must simply work in modest ways. I think that in so doing we are able to accomplish a lot. To pace ourselves and to really do what we can properly is in itself a practice. I think when we work with a a true, qualified teacher, he has the ability to load on the tasks as we are able to assume them, and the tasks are always greater than we think we can assume, but with their help and by sheer grit, we do eventually manage. I think it is a question of steady, little steps. I don’t want to pretend that I am a good, steady, little-step practitioner, but I recognize the value of doing it that way. I do lots of jumping around. I deviate from the path and I sometimes try to run and trip up and fall and have to start over. Therefore, I do recognize that steady, little steps are the way to go.

Mandala: The press materials for Monk With A Camera, the documentary, say that your appointment as abbot “challenges Nicholas once more to forge a path where no monk has gone before, merging East and West, erasing cultural boundaries, bringing happiness and compassion to the world through his unique experiences as a Westerner and his comprehensive understanding of the way of the Buddha.”

Khen Rinpoche: Sounds pretty good! Who is this guy?

Mandala: I want to look at the phrases “merging East and West” and “erasing cultural boundaries” because it seems that your role is much more nuanced and complex than that. I am interested really to hear you reflect more on how you describe the path you are traveling in both the Tibetan Buddhist and Western worlds and the work you are engaged in.

Khen Rinpoche: I remember His Holiness attending a meeting of Buddhist teachers that took place at Spirit Rock in 2000. I was sent to it by Khyongla Rinpoche; I had just returned from India having received my Geshe degree. His Holiness said to everyone there from all the Buddhist traditions teaching in the West, “We must not think of systematizing Western Buddhism. As Buddhism comes here from all the different countries, slowly and steadily a form of Buddhism will evolve in the West over a few centuries. So we are contributing to, and not trying to define, what it becomes.”

What I do, what FPMT centers do, and what teachers from other centers do is bring their own practice and knowledge to this to let Buddhism evolve.

Mandala: The documentary film Monk with a Camera focuses on the tension between your life-long love of photography and your commitment to being a Dharma student and monk. Could you tell me more about what you’ve learned about the relationship between practicing Dharma and practicing photography? What kind of advice would you give your younger self in this regard?

I’m very thankful to Rinpoche and my other teachers that they never suggested that I get rid of all my cameras and that I cut myself off from my world of old friends and family. Instead they encouraged that I concentrate on myself and on transforming my relationship with my photography and my friends.

I feel I’ve been able to integrate photography and maintain a relationship with my old friends. As it is said, the problem does not lie in the camera, the problem lies in our attachment to the camera. And we have to work on ourselves to diminish the attachment, and in so doing, the photography becomes merely a vehicle and the camera becomes merely a tool for saying what we have to say. I don’t want to suggest that I’m there. I’m working on it and I’m aware of the possibilities of making those transformations.

Photo by Saskia de Rothschild – Courtesy of Nicholas Vreeland

For more on the documentary and to see examples of Nicholas Vreeland’s photography, visit Monk with a Camera.

Use problems as ornaments, seeing them as extremely precious, because they make you achieve enlightenment quickly, by getting you to achieve bodhicitta. Experience these problems on behalf of all sentient beings, giving all happiness to sentient beings. This is the ornament.